I am using both the original drawings and the CAD printouts from Marc Zeitlin's site. I've seen some complaints about the original hand drawn drawings not always lining up, and I figured a CAD file would be more precise. Being able to cut up the CAD drawings while leaving the originals intact was a plus as well. I noticed that the two sets don't always line up, though, and figured the hand drawings were the authority when they didn't match up. I had seem some guys complaining about how hard it was to cut this foam and thought "how hard can it be? It's foam!" Well, there's foam, and then there's foam. The heavy density last-a foam is like sandstone - it took forever to get the F-28 cut out.
Flush with my success, I proceeded to go to work on the instrument lower panel section. I had to put a 1/4" spacer down the center of the CAD printout to get it to match the hand drawings. I quickly learned a few lessons; first, don't leave your original drawings under the foam panel you are cutting out. (Yep, I sliced right through them. Gonna have to tape them back together.) Second, hole saw drill bits are great for cutting out the corners if you can keep control of the drill bit. I left a few ugly corners that I'll have to fix after I glass the panel. Third, read the directions and notes before you begin. After I finished the lower panel, I realized that I had forgotten to add the extra 1/4" to the bottom that everyone says is needed to get it to fit. Crap. But all in all, nothing was unfixable at this stage:
I was worried about get the bevel on the F-22 doubler just right since it was at such a shallow angle, but my trusty wood rasp got it right on the money.After cutting out the bulkheads, I made sure to label all of the pieces, and marked the seatback with "front/back/top/bottom" as well. I had read about some builders accidently making the cutouts backwards, and didn't want to make the same mistake.
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